Mosquito facts: Invincible eggs and once hatched, biting is just around the corner

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that homeowners should actively remove any standing water in their yards during the summer months when mosquitoes are most active in breeding and biting. Besides wearing an insect repellent

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that homeowners should actively remove any standing water in their yards during the summer months when mosquitoes are most active in breeding and biting. Besides wearing an insect repellent

Mosquitoes — along with their fiendish neighbors no-see-ums — can make being outdoors in the Lowcountry unpleasant.

That's not to mention the diseases mosquitoes can transmit via their bites, such as West Nile and Eastern equine encephalitis viruses, both of which were recorded in South Carolina in 2017, according to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

The Centers for Disease Control recorded 17 human cases of West Nile virus in South Carolina in 2017. Two of those cases were fatal.

Last year, West Nile cases started popping up in South Carolina in early July.

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Across the state line in Georgia, officials reported 47 West Nile cases statewide and 7 deaths, one of which was in Chatham County, in 2017.

Eastern equine encephalitis, which also is spread by mosquitoes, can affect humans, but it is rare for it to do so, according to DHEC. Of the nine cases in South Carolina animals last year, one of those was in Jasper County.

Here are a few tips to follow when fighting off mosquitoes this summer:

Early Friday morning, Aug. 12, 2016, Wade Livingston, in his work as a reporter for The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette, was a fly on a wall as one of the people who makes Beaufort County Mosquito Control go, chief pilot Russ Appleton, too

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Read the label and check for the right ingredients.

DHEC recommended looking for one of these ingredients when choosing insect repellent:

Applying sunscreen, too? Stick to these rules.

Sunscreen should be used before using insect repellent, according to the CDC's Yellow Book of travel advice, which cautioned that DEET may decrease the SPF of a sunscreen by one-third.

In turn, the Yellow Book says, sunscreen may increase the skin's absorption of DEET.

Experts do not recommend using products that are a sunscreen plus insect repellent combo, because sunscreen needs to be applied more often than insect repellent.

In his latest attempt to rid the world of mosquito-borne disease, Dr. Matthew DeGennaro of Florida International University has created a new trap for the deadly insect. DeGennaro calls for an “all hands on deck” approach to saving the lives of 73